


Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark, But It Gets Better

by executrix



Category: Hamlet-Shakespeare
Genre: Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-11
Updated: 2011-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-23 15:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hamlet has a momentous encounter with the strolling players, and learns a valuable Life Lesson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark, But It Gets Better

**Author's Note:**

> Written for gileonnen's "Big Gay Hamlet" ficathon.

RISING ACTION  
After another sleepless night, when it was too dark to stalk the lobby book in hand, Prince Hamlet walked through the streets of Elsinore. At the outskirts of town, he saw a circle of aged, listing wagons, the brave paint on their sides faded and peeling. He remembered that the tragedians of the city had returned, and for a moment his lips were threatened with a smile.   
The prince recollected how handsome the principal player was, the grace with which he moved, the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his legs. Unless you looked very closely, you would never see that the velvet of his cloak was rubbed and stained, his hose darned in a dozen places. And if you looked very closely, you would be drawn into the illusion.   
When dawn came, the makeshift camp began to stir. The wind blew down a blanket that, stretched over a rope on two poles, had made a lean-to. Hamlet sat on a log and heard cursing and laughter as two men unfurled themselves from a single bed-roll, pulled on hose and boots, and, with unbraced shirts, chase after the blanket.   
One of the men tried to tighten the rope. The other said, “Nay, sweeting, ‘tis no use, we must rise soon in all events.” The other man shrugged, gave him a kiss, and the two of them folded the blanket, folded the bedroll, and pulled up the stakes.  
An older man walked toward them, his face thunderous enough for an angry parle. Hamlet flinched, remembering that expression on his father’s face. “I see you’re awake, Jens,” he said. Hamlet’s heart was in his throat, wondering if the man (whom he recognized as the man who took the Heavy Father line in the tragedies) would take up a hue and cry for the soldiery. Perhaps the two men could run away faster than the soldiers could be roused from their drunken sleep.  
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you fifty times, Jens,” the man said. “Mugging. Improvising French pox jokes. It’s cheap. Just play what’s set down on your sides, all right? Tell him, Kristof.”  
“Sorry, luv, but he’s right,” Kristof said. “I mean, we all like to get the laughs, especially close to the time to pass the hat, but…”  
“Rotten little one-cannon town like this,” Jens said sulkily. “Half of the plays we’ve got in rep-- caviar to the general! All that senseless Ilium, total gules, unnerved father, Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword heritage stuff. Seneca’s too heavy. You say I’m pandering, I call it making theater accessible to the audience…”  
Hamlet stood up, brushed some dried leaves off his cloak, and walked toward the three tragedians. The leader of the company (the pageant wagons identified him as Viktor Krummelsk) recognized the prince, who had been something of an inn-door Johnny during previous stands. He shooed away Jens and Kristof, and made a deep, indeed, theatrical obeisance to the prince.   
“What service may I render you, lord Prince?”  
“You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down, could you not?”  
“*I* could,” Krummelsk said. “Now Kristof, he always says ‘Call me Miss Birdseye, the show is frozen.’”   
Hamlet stared at him. “The man who played Orestes,” he said. “I don’t recall his name…”  
“Petr Jeppesen,” Krummelsk said.   
“Is he still a member of your company?”  
“Oh, aye, still playing leads. Kristof and Jens, they’re more the sort swells a procession going ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb.’ Petr’s not here right now though. We were in the tavern last night and he exited, pursued by a bear.Always went for the big hairy chaps, Jens fancied him rotten but nothing doing there so he took up with Kristof instead.”  
Hamlet cleared his throat. “Are you all…?” and couldn’t think of an appropriate term.  
“Not me, m’Lord…I’ve got a wife and little eyeases…but, still, if you took everyone who was Like That out of the theater, what’d you have left? Shadow puppets and bearbaiting. So live and let live, that’s my motto.”  
By this time, actors began to drift over, yawning, dipping chunks of bread into the first hippocras of the day, vocalizing, and pretending to be whales and weasels.   
Hamlet stayed through the run-through and applauded politely.  
“I hope the play pleased your princely grace,” Krummelsk said. “Bearing in mind that it’ll be all right on the night…”  
“I do have a few notes,” Hamlet said.   
There was a bit of eye-rolling, because they WERE the best actors in the world (“Scene individable: Polish Gazette” and “Poem unlimited: Swedish Review” it said on the playbills, and one of the young Krummelsks was engaged in adding “Additional Dialogue by Lord Hamlet” to tonight’s bill.) “Use all gently,” Hamlet said. “You must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness…Be not too tame neither…”   
It went on for a while, and everyone gave a passable performance of being enthralled. Because patrons might be even more obtuse than critics, but at least the patrons contributed the occasional purse of gold or velvet doublet or safe-conduct to the border.   
When at last he fell silent, Krummelsk drew Hamlet aside and whispered a certain suggestion in his ear.   
For a moment, the prince’s chapfallen countenance was transfigured. “Of course!” he said. “That’s brilliant! That’s just what I’ll do!”  
CLIMAX  
Horatio had not seen the prince for more than a day. In some trepidation—fearing that his friend might have laid desperate hands on himself—he went to Hamlet’s private chambers. Far from suicidal, Hamlet was in a whirl of joyous activity, alternating between pushing garments into a trunk and marking passages in books with small slips of parchment.   
“Err,” Horatio said, incapable of coming up with anything clever. “It looks like you’re packing.”  
“I’m going back to Wittenberg,” Hamlet said. “I’m going to get an MFA in directing.” Then he grasped Horatio’s hand and stood, at arm’s length, gazing into his face as if he had never seen him before. “Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish her election, she hath sealed thee for herself,” he said. “Horatio, come back to Wittenberg with me! If…if…well, they’ll probably let you re-sit, and I’ll help you rewrite those chapters, and if not, I’m sure you can get work teaching Danish.”  
“With all my heart, my lord,” his fellow-student said. Because he was getting pretty tired of all those “Horatio HamBlower” jokes, and if he had the name he might as well have the game. Anyway, to Horatio, Wittenberg had always meant Boys.  
FALLING ACTION  
The young prince was not the only Dane to go into exile. Ostensibly engaged in a fact-finding mission about the overdue English tribute,” Claudius and Gertrude left the country after Willow confronted them with a scrying-glass recording of Old King Hamlet’s account of his murder. Then, after Willow (muttering “shut up, Tara,” under her breath) burned some herbs and did something or other with ermine bones, the noble electors acclaimed Ophelia and Willow as co-regents.   
The two youthful Queens sent a rich gift of lipsticks and nylons (well, fine-spun silk stockings) to Queen Susan, because, as Willow said, what a rip-off. Queen Susan remained at their court and led the royal council, saying that she’d rather stay in a land of happiness, peace, and plenty than go back to Aslan’s litterbox.   
Topping the bill at the Rainbow Festival’s opening night was the Krummelsk Company. Their offering started off with a dumbshow. A disconsolate youth, who fumbled the ball at sports, made lovely farthingales for his sister’s dolls, coiffed all his mother’s friends stylishly, and liked show madrigals, was about to pour poison in his ear.   
But he was deterred by the entrance of a kickline, dressed as Minions of Great Kings of History.   
Jens, dressed as Alcibiades (i.e., not much) took center stage and sang,  
“I am what I am…I don’t want praise…oh, who am I kidding, of COURSE I want praise…I don’t want pity…”  
The next morning, a lissome dark-eyed youth in violet sarcenet turned up at the tech. “I can sing both high and low,” he said, a statement that was proved out by excellent renditions of both “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” and “Glitter and Be Gay.”   
Viktor, clutching his own stones in sympathy, at first thought that the poor chap must be a eunuch. Then, taking a closer look at the codpiece region, he said, “What’s your name?”  
“Cesario.”  
“Oh, pull the other leg, it’s got akavit in it.”  
“All right. Viola.”  
“Well, that tears it, doesn’t it?”   
“You’ve got all those plays where there are girls disguised as boys,” Viola said. “Why not get a real girl, then?”  
“Well, the girl’s only dressed as a girl for five minutes, isn’t she?” Kristof said. “Then the boy gets back into boys’ togs. Girls just aren’t convincing dressed as boys, look at how old Krummers twigged you right away.”  
“Boys dressed as girls, you call that convincing?”  
“It’s what they’re used to, you see,” Viktor said. “I mean, this high-toned grant-funded stuff at court is one thing, but when you’re out playing the innyards for pennies, the audience’d never wear it.”


End file.
